In many sectors property rights over knowledge and information are weak as they are embodied in employees, competitors can copy or customers can pirate. Yet comprehensive studies show that firms systematically invest in these assets. We offer a simple taxonomy of strategies that firms use to...

"Two aspects of media bias are important empirically. First, bias is persistent: it does not seem to disappear even when the media is under scrutiny. Second, bias is conflicting: different people often perceive bias in the same media outlet to be of opposite signs. We build a model in which both...

Long-term relationships between business firms and investment banks are pervasive in developed security markets and there is evidence that better monitoring and information result from these relationships. Therefore, security markets should allocate resources better when an investment banking...

We study how the sequence of financing of Ramp;D varies according to the ease with which property rights over knowledge can be defined. There are two financiers, a venture capitalist and a corporation. The knowledge acquired in costly research becomes embodied in the researcher's human capital,...

We study how the sequence of financing of Ramp;D varies according to the ease with which property rights over knowledge can be defined. There are two financiers, a venture capitalist and a corporation. The knowledge acquired in costly research becomes embodied in the researcher's human capital,...

Previous studies have acknowledged the tradeoff between relationships and competition in financial intermediation. In this paper, we explore the structural determinants of this tradeoff in the investment banking market, by deriving it from the underlying relationship technology. In the model,...

We study the determinants of market structure in financial intermediation markets when property rights over information are weak. We show that incentives to gather information to screen firms can be preserved in decentralized markets with more than one intermediary. In equilibrium, each...